One of the questions I get asked about quite a lot from the kids’ brands that I work with is how they can start approaching influencers to work with them. So I thought I would put together some tips on how you can do this. Here we go.

What is a Social Media Influencer?

First of all, I think it’s important we look at what an influencer actually is, especially on Social Media. Let’s take a look at the following definition from PixLee it states:

“A Social Media Influencer is a user on social media who has established credibility in a specific industry. A social media influencer has access to a large audience and can persuade others by virtue of their authenticity and reach.”

So when looking at the above it’s identifying a person who has built an authentic, engaged audience in a specific niche i.e. it could be being a parent blogger who also shares insight into their lives on Social Media. Example of this is Anna from Mother Pukka or Clemmie from Mother of Daughters.

But what are the things you need to keep in mind when thinking of working with an influencer and what are the myths behind it all?

1: Popularity

This can often be the biggest myth and key thing to look at. Popularity doesn’t always equal influence. You might see huge follower numbers there, but as we also know with our business accounts you can get any Tom, Dick or Harry following you sometimes and they’re not always our target customer, so imagine how many of these may also be following your influencer of choice. What you should be looking at over Follower numbers is, that’s right you probably guessed it, engagement!

You need to look at how much interaction their posts get and this is beyond likes, what is the engagement? You might find someone has 20K followers and a post that gets 561 likes and 5 comments. Look at this when you are considering who to approach and potentially work with for your brand or business.

2: Relationships

Working with an influencer is like anything else in business, it’s about the relationship you both have. Now, of course, this will take time, but if you are wanting to create a sustainable relationship that can not only work for you and your business initially but long-term and generate sales this is what you need to consider.

So find the influencers who are right for your business. Don’t just target the ones based on their numbers (as point above). You want to work with someone who has the same values as you and your business, would be a great fit for your product or service. You find that when a product really works and suits the influencers life and their values they talk about it in a much more natural and authentic way too.

A great way to start building these relationships is to identify who, then start interacting and engaging, if you generally like them and like what they’re about this wouldn’t feel like work either, it will feel natural. Then when you want to approach them they may already recognise your name and know about your business, ice broken.

Another great idea is to see how you could both work on some content together, maybe a guest blog post on your site or a joint interview perhaps.

3: Measuring ROI

Depending on how you decide to work with an influencer it could be via gifting a product or a paid post/story etc you need to make sure you are measuring the ROI on this work. I don’t just mean via likes and comments or more followers for you – we all know this a vanity metric at times and people can just jump on a follow wagon through influence, it needs to attribute back to sales – money in the bank for your business.

4: Decide your terms

This is a relationship and you need to state exactly what each party expects and will be delivered. So think about what you will be giving, whether that a product or you’re paying, the value of those things and then think about what you expect. Make a list of what this includes i.e.
X number of mentions
1 x post on feed including these tags and hashtags, links
2 x mentions in Stories including these tags and hashtags and swipe up links

You can then reach an agreement with the influencer on what is going to happen so you both know what is expected from each of you. You then have metrics you can measure for your ROI by looking at your analytics, see where there has been website traffic to your store from the day the post/story went out and look at that monetary conversion.

5: Does it fit in with your bigger picture?

Working with an influencer is the same as any marketing activity you have planned, asked yourself does it fit? It is right for where you want to go with the business, does it work with your other activities you have planned? It should ideally fit in with your other strategies and ideas – remember all the marketing cogs work as one.

*A new term on the block*

Nano-influencers. These are accounts with roughly 1000-5000 following (remember to take a look at their followers too and see if they align with your target audience) and they are now having quite high engagement on Instagram due to lower following and closer relationships with their followers. So it could be worth looking at this type of influencer and how this might work for your business.

The New York Times published an article on this just recently. Take a look here.

I hope this blog has helped you think about how you can work with influencers in your business, what to look for and more importantly what to ask when working together.

If you want to look at what a good engagement rate is and what that looks like here is a handy selection of tools from Influencer Marketing Hub.

You want to start a family-focused blog but not sure where to begin? Here are some tips to help you.

Blogging is a fantastic space to document what is going on in your life, your opinions about things, creating communities, bringing like-minded individuals together – there are so many benefits to starting a blog. Having one that focuses on family, and your family is a brilliant way to start because you will no doubt have content that people can relate to and that’s why we like reading blogs. We read stories about what people are doing or going through and we connect with them. We also like reading them to see what amazing things people have discovered or places they’ve been to and recommend. Blogging is a huge online area and there is space for everyone. We all have unique voices and we have all something to say.

What is it going to be about?

When starting up with a blog you do need to think first and foremost what your blog is going to be about – perhaps you really love the area that you live so you want to bring content to other parents in that area or even outside visitors about all the amazing things you can do there as a family. You might just want to document your parenting journey and how you’re finding it. Maybe you’ve always been interested in fashion and now want to blog about what styles you have found work for you as a parent. The ideas are endless, but to begin you need to find yours.

What platform should I use?

So you have your idea of what you want to be talking to people about so the next thing to look at is where are you going to do it? What platform are you going to use? I would always recommend WordPress because it is a brilliant platform for blogs. You will often find that most blogs are on WordPress.com as it is free and there are lots of templates you can use to create a nice blog. The interface is really nice and simple too so you don’t have to get too overwhelmed everytime you want to post.

With WordPress.com you can sometimes find that customisation can be quite limited to the templates you choose and that to get a bit more flexibility you might need to look at their Business package and if you really want a nice template possibly even consider purchasing a premium one too. However I do think it’s important that I highlight that there are two WordPresses – WordPress.com and WordPress.org – both the same company but both have different functions, features and flexibility. If you want to have a read through the difference between the two you can on my post here.

This is where you need to think about what exactly you want from your blog and what scope you want it to have. For example, if eventually, you would like to have a Shop integrated with your blog then WordPress.org would be a better choice. If you wanted your blog to have scope to potential run as a business where you may need additional functions again I would look at WordPress.org. The same if you want to create a truly bespoke blog design I would use WordPress.org.

Thinking about getting “found”

Now you’re going to need to think with a marketing head here too because you do want your content to get found and read by people and you can’t just rely on Social Media for this. So when looking at a platform take into account SEO ( Search Engine Optimisation) which is what you need on your pages and blog posts so you get “found” in Google when people search for keywords or topics that could relate to your blog posts – for example

“How to get creative with vegetables so your kids will eat them”

This is the title of your post, fab! But you now need to make sure that you can create a unique page title for this post and be able to customise the description of the page. This isn’t the blog content itself this is in addition and this is your SEO.

To show you in real terms.

I popped this very blog title example into Google and this was the top search result

And this is a blogger.

That Purple line you can see, that’s her unique page title.

The green is the link to the post.

The text after the date is the description, which sadly cuts off and isn’t as SEO friendly as it could be, ideally these should be 160 characters. But you can see where it has picked up the keywords in her content on her post as these are shown in bold.

This is why when choosing a platform for your family focused blog you need to think about whether you can edit your SEO for your blog posts as this will determine how you content gets ranked and how visible it is for people searching.

Should I care that much about design?

This is really down to personal preference and what you want from your blog. You may just want to focus on the content alone and aren’t bothered too much about the look of it for your readers. Blogger’s like The UnMummsy Mum first created her blog on Blogger and for years kept the blog on this however now she has a nice new design for the site which actually makes it more like a website than a blog (it’s lovely) with lots of different pages for people to choose from without losing that blog feel.

Another favourite of mine is Fritha’s otherwise known as Tigerlily Quinn she has a lovely design that also really fits with the content she talks about and her personality.

So really, when it comes to the design of your blog it is down to what you want it to be and represent. For me personally I love a nice blog that takes me on a journey, it’s visually pleasing and a nice layout for me to follow. However, the most important thing above all will always be your content and what you are sharing with the world.

WELCOME

Here is my little hub of digital information ready to help you tackle digital marketing in your business and reach that all important target audience – parents and children. I cover a whole host of subjects in this blog, along with featuring amazing guest posts from contributing authors. If you have a subject you’d love to see covered here, please feel free to contact me and let me know. Hope you enjoy!

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